


Running to Nowhere

by of_raven_wings



Series: Darcy Lewis Smut Week Challenge [4]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Darcy Lewis Smut Week, F/M, Smut, apparently i can't write anything without it getting angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-29
Updated: 2013-11-29
Packaged: 2018-01-02 23:01:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1062679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/of_raven_wings/pseuds/of_raven_wings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy is fed up with not knowing how Loki feels about her, and so she decides that she needs some space.  She buys a ticket on the first bus anywhere, just needing to get away from him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Running to Nowhere

**Author's Note:**

> Written as part of Darcy Lewis Smut Week.
> 
> prompt: mind games
> 
> I don't think this really ended up being much about mind games per se, but this is what happened when I sat down to write. And so it is.
> 
> I'm trying to post these on schedule for the challenge, so please ignore any typos or weirdness that sneaks in.

“Seriously, the first bus to anywhere,” Darcy says.  “And I mean anywhere.”

The woman behind the counter - her name badge says that she’s Rhonda - scans her computer screen.  She taps it with one lacquered fingernail.  “There’s only one bus on the lot right now.  But if you wait a few hours, you could go to-“

“I don’t want to wait.  And I don’t care.  I’ll take a ticket on the bus that’s here.  I don’t care if it’s going straight to hell, so long as it’s leaving here.”

Rhonda takes Darcy’s money, takes her time printing out the ticket.  She pushes the ticket and Darcy’s change across the counter.  “Whoever it is that you’re running from, he or she isn’t worth it, honey.  Believe me, they never are.”

Darcy shoves her change into her pocket, pulls her overnight bag up onto her shoulder.  “I’m not running.”

Rhonda just nods.  “I said that I needed space five years ago when I came here.  And how here I am, alone.  And he went into therapy, and he’s the one with the house and three kids.”

“I don’t need space.  I just need…”  Darcy shrugs.

“Space?”  Rhonda smiles.  “It’s okay, honey.  Just make sure you keep enough money for a return ticket, that’s all.  And don’t make the same mistake I did.  Don’t let go of a good thing, even if the good is buried.  Sometimes they just need help finding it.”

Darcy heads for the lot where the bus waits.  She folds her ticket so she can’t see the destination, and makes sure she doesn’t look at the sign on the front of the bus.  She truly doesn’t care where she’s going.  A bus route means that there will be some kind of civilisation, even if it’s just a motel and a bar.  And that’s all she wants right now.  A place where she can be alone.  Where she can think.

She picks a seat near the back of the bus, sets her bag on the empty seat next to her.  There’s one other passenger on the bus - an old man in the front seat, already asleep, his mouth slack and his false teeth on the verge of falling out.

Darcy looks out of the window.  She can just see a sliver of Avengers Tower, its lights bright against the pre-dawn sky.  Loki is there somewhere, perhaps sleeping, perhaps working on one of those weird clockwork sculptures.  She doesn’t know why, but in her mind, she rarely thinks of him sleeping.  He’s always brimming with so much mercurial energy, it seems impossible that he should ever stop moving or thinking long enough to sleep.

Curling up in her seat, she fishes her iPod out of her bag, slips her headphones into her ears.  She sets the player to shuffle, as uncaring of what she listens to as she is of the bus’s destination.  She just wants enough noise to drown out the world.

 

#

 

The motel room is tiny, but it’s clean.  

Darcy breathes a sigh of relief as she closes and locks the door.  She had feared the worst when she’d seen the motel from the road.  The neon sign was broken, and the front office almost totally overgrown with some kind of ivy, with just a small space cleared for the window.  Inside, she had found a teenage boy tending reception.  He hadn’t met her eyes when she inquired about rates, and hadn’t asked her name or for her to sign in, had just taken her cash and handed her a key.  

She had paid for a single night, and the boy had assured her that she could just pay night by night.  Looking around the room, she suspected that more people rented these rooms out by the hour.  It was the kind of place she could easily imaging a pair of lovers sneaking away for an afternoon, a night.

She sets down her overnight bag, occupies herself for a few minutes unpacking.  She takes out her wallet, counts her money.  Remembering Rhonda, she slips out several notes and tucks them into the lining of her bag.  Not that she intends on actually going back, of course.

That thought hits her like ice running through her veins.  Because she actually has no idea _what_ she intends.

A week had passed since the incident in the basement.  A week in which Loki had alternated between ignoring her and being utterly professional.  They had been sent out on two more assignments, and each time Darcy had made certain that she and Loki were never together in a place that they could get locked into.  Let Loki go alone to investigate any potential magic objects, knowing that he would touch them, no matter what she said.

The worst part is that he hadn’t even noticed.

The previous night, the SHIELD employees and Avengers currently in residence had gathered, as per usual for a Friday night.  It was Pepper’s idea, to encourage team bonding.  None of the Avengers had been there that night, but Loki had, dapper as always in one of his damn expensive suits.  Darcy had gone, because she knew it was expected of her.

She had spent most of the night sitting in a corner sipping slowly from a single glass of wine, just watching Loki.  Lauren had appeared midway through the evening, and had tailed Loki everywhere, her hand curling around his arm now and again.  She had consumed wine steadily through the night, growing more and more unsteady on her heels.  When Lauren had stumbled, catching Loki around the waist to keep from falling, he had let her.  And more, his arm had moved around her waist, remained there.

Lauren had peered around Loki, then, and seen Darcy in the corner.  Smiled crookedly.

Loki, in turn, had not looked at Darcy once.

Darcy had fled then, returning to her apartment.  She had showered, then lain in bed, wide awake, watching the shadows crawling across the ceiling.  The sky had only begun to lighten when she had hauled herself out of bed, packed her bag and left the Tower.  Deliberately left all of her ID behind, along with her phone.  All she brought was cash and her iPod, as well as a few light books.

Now, she was in a motel room in a town that she didn’t even know the name of.  Outside the motel room window, she could see a dusty street, a diner named _Ma’s_ opposite.  The sky above was a clear, pure blue.

She could be anywhere.  She could be nowhere.

She lies down on the bed, the nylon bedspread sliding beneath her weight.  The curtains move in the breeze from the air conditioner, shadows undulating across the cracked ceiling.

Maybe tomorrow she’ll book this room for another night.  Maybe she’ll buy a ticket on the first bus going anywhere.  Maybe she’ll keep on doing that over and over until she runs out of money.

 _And what then_? a voice asks in her mind.

Darcy turns over, facing away from the window.  The opposite wall holds a tiny, battered desk and chair that someone has tried to paint white, but the white is flaking away in chunks, revealing the raw wood beneath.  A yellowing glass vase rests on top of the desk, a clutch of cheap silk daisies held within.  There’s a notepad and a pen, both cheap and flimsy.  Next to the desk, a tiny fridge, its door scarred and dented.  The wall above holds a painting of an anonymous desert scene that could be anywhere in the world.

She could be anywhere in the world.

She could _go_ anywhere in the world.  All she has to do is find herself a job somewhere.  She can waitress, she can work as a secretary.  Hell, she can sling burgers, if it comes to it.  She never has to go back to the Tower.  She never has to go back to Loki.

She should feel free.

She tells herself that she does.

 

#

 

A glass of beer is set down before her, foam overflowing onto the tiny table.

Darcy looks up at the man who stands next to her.  For a moment, she sees a tall, slender man, with dark hair and green eyes, and her heart skips.  Then she blinks, and it is another man standing there.  He is as tall, but muscular, his hair dark blonde and cropped short.  His warm brown eyes are the kind that smiles when he does.

Darcy pops her headphones out of her ears.  “I didn’t order anything,” she says.

The man smiles, and damn, but he has a pretty smile.  “And I’m not a waiter,” he says.  He hooks his fingers into the belt loops of his jeans.  “I just thought you looked like you could do with a drink, that’s all.  Nothing creepy, not even trying to hit on you.  Unless you want me to,” he adds, his grin twisting in an endearingly boyish fashion.  “I’m Leo, and I’m over there.  If you want to be alone, it’s all cool, and I hope you enjoy the drink.  And if not…I’m over there.”

Darcy watches him as he crosses the bar and rejoins his group of friends.  They all, Leo included, look to be around her age, perhaps one or two years younger.  And they’re laughing, and drinking, and enjoying themselves in a way that she realises she hasn’t seen for a long time.  In SHIELD, it’s all sarcasm and digs, when it’s not the end of the world or strange alien artefacts doing strange alien things.

Picking up her beer, she takes a sip and is pleasantly surprised.  She’s not much of a beer drinker in general, because so much of what people tended to drink tasted like little more than coloured water, but this one is good.  She’d lay her bets that it was a microbrew of some kind, and makes a mental note to find out where it was brewed before she leaves.

If when leaves.  When she leaves.

Across the room, Leo stands with his back to her.  He has the kind of build that suggests that he’s earned his muscles from some kind of hard work, and his cropped hair has the kind of wave that she suspects would become tight ringlets if he grew it long enough.  He reminds her of the kinds of guys she’d always gone for.  Tall and strong, sunny and happy and warm.

Totally the opposite of Loki.

And she swears under her breath, then, because she promised herself that she was just going to go out to a bar, have a drink and soak in some atmosphere.  Maybe talk to some people if she felt like it, otherwise just find a quiet corner with her iPod and a book.  

She has the quiet corner.  She has the iPod and the book, though she’s barely read a page, even though it’s the lightest and the fluffiest of the books she brought along.

Darcy takes another drink.  Her hand moves towards her pocket by instinct before she remembers that she left her phone back in her apartment in New York.  She wonders if anyone has actually called it, looking for her.  She doubts it.  The only person who’s likely to is Jane, and her weekends are always taken up by Thor.  Not that she and Jane had ever actually been friends.

Sitting here, working her way slowly through the beer, she’s wondering why she even stayed.  Why she opted to join SHIELD.  When she was younger, she’d just wanted to work at something that made the world a better place.  Something where she could spend her weekends wrapped up reading.  Maybe get married, maybe have children.  She just wanted to be happy.

And what about any of this made her happy?

She tucks her iPod into her pocket, picks up her beer and crosses the bar to Leo.

He smiles when he sees her, slips his arm around her shoulders.  She leans into the warmth of his body, and she smiles back.

 

#

 

Darcy drops the keys for the second time, giggling uncontrollably.  “I think someone broke my key,” she says, picking them up again.

Leo curls his arm around her waist, his hand closing over hers, and helping her to slide the key into the lock.  His hands are shaking just as much as hers, but together they manage it.  She ushers him into the motel room, flinging her arms wide.

“Welcome to my kingdom,” she says, laughing.

Leo closes the door, falls into a surprisingly graceful bow, given his muscular frame.  “My Queen.”

Darcy watches him as he straightens in another graceful move.  In the bar, she hadn’t noticed that grace.  She suspects that he’s a great dancer, and great at other things, too.

He smiles.  “My Queen, may I have permission to useth the royal bathroom?  Mine bladder is heavy with drink.”

Darcy points at the door.  “Useth away.”

He vanishes into the tiny room, and she flops down onto the bed.  The curtains are still open, and the lights from a passing car play across the ceiling.  She rolls over, finds the cheap radio on the bedside table.  Turns it on, and scrolls through the stations until she finds something that isn’t totally horrible.  She wishes she had some way to play her iPod, but she only has her headphones.

When Leo emerges, his hair is damp, the longest locks near his ears curling against his skin.  Darcy shifts her weight, and realises that her bladder is also heavy.

“I think I need to freshen up as well,” she says.

Leo holds the door open for her.

In the bathroom, she takes care of her bladder.  Checks her reflection, runs her hands through her hair.  Checks her breath, briefly considers brushing her teeth but figures that’s probably too obvious.  Besides, he’s been drinking as much as she has.

She’s never been one for one-night-stands, but right now, it feels like just what she needs.  Some warmth, someone who just wants to be with her for the night, if just for the physical connection.  And Leo seems like a good enough guy, so maybe there would even be more nights.

She runs through a mental list.  She’s been taking her pill, so she’s protected on that front, and she has condoms in her purse as a matter of course, not that she’s ever needed to use them for something like this.  It’s just a habit that she picked up in college because everyone else did it, and right now, she sends a mental thank you to all of the girls who actually used their stashes, and reminded her that the damn things could expire and she needed to replace them frequently.

Something moves in the corner of her eye, and she turns quickly, but there’s nothing there.  It must have just been an insect, she decides.  But suddenly the effects of the beer are gone, and she feels stone cold sober.

She meets her eyes in her reflection.  _Did_ she want to do this?

“Yes,” she says.  “Yes, I do.”

 _And fuck you, Loki_ , she adds silently, fluffing her hair again.

Leo is sitting on the bed when she enters the motel room again.  He’s taken off his shoes, but is otherwise is still fully dressed.  He’s fiddling with the radio, twisting the dial gently as he tries to hone in on a station.  Finally, he manages to get it tuned where he wants, and soft classical music fills the room.

“I wouldn’t have guessed you for classical,” Darcy says, pulling off her own shoes and kicking them into the corner.

“It’s the only station that doesn’t have an obnoxious DJ who’ll cut over the music screaming every five minutes,” Leo says, putting the radio back on the bedside table.

Darcy joins him on the bed, sitting cross-legged.  She’s aware of the fact that her clothing and skin smells like the bar: stale smoke and staler beer.  She suddenly wishes that she’d sent Leo off to get more beer or something so she could have had time to have a shower.

Leo doesn’t seem to care, because he slides his arms around her, lifts her into his lap.  And he’s so very warm, his arms and chest enclosing her in a sphere of warmth.  She leans into him, curls her arms around his neck.

“Hi,” she says.

He slides his hands down the length of her back, rests them on the swell of her hips.  Makes an appreciative humming sound.  “Hi.”

His lips approach hers, and Darcy leans into the kiss.  She expects something hard, but Leo is gentle, his lips barely brushing over hers.  His hands slide up and down her spine, slow and languid, as though they had all day to explore each other.  As though they were actual lovers, not two strangers who are spending a single night together.

Leo slides a hand up her ribs, curves his fingers over the swell of her breast.  And suddenly it’s too gentle, and she’s aware of just how _wrong_ this is, how much she doesn’t want this.

She pulls back from his kiss, blinking back tears.

“Hey, are you okay?” Leo asks.  “Did I do something wrong?”

Darcy shakes her head.  “No, actually, you’re lovely.  Really lovely.  But I just can’t do this.”

He smiles that beautiful warm smile, and she feels a pang of actual regret.  “It’s the guy you’re running from, isn’t it?”

“I…it’s complicated.”

He slides away from under her.  Puts his shoes back on, and crosses to the other side of the room, where he scribbles on the notepad on the desk.

“If things get less complicated, feel free to give me a call?  Not just for this,” he says, gesturing at the bed.  “But a real date.”

“I’m really sorry,” Darcy says.  “I didn’t mean to lead you on or anything.”

“No one promised anything.”  Leo leans down, kisses her on the forehead.  “Don’t get me wrong.  It would have been nice.  More than nice.  And if you go back to him, then make sure he’s worth you, okay?  And if not, give me a call?”

Darcy just nods, and Leo leaves, closing the door quietly behind him.

Darcy flops down onto the bed, wondering what the hell she’s doing.  The classical music still plays, something by Mozart, she thinks.  She reaches out and turns it off, then lies back and closes her eyes.

Silence hangs thick in the room.

“Well, he was _nice_.”

Darcy’s eyes fly open, and she sits up so fast that she manages to slide right off the nylon bedspread, landing in and undignified pile on the floor.  And at Loki’s feet.

He’s sitting in the chair, his long legs stretched out in front of him.  For once, he’s not wearing a suit, but rather something like a scaled-down version of his Asgardian armour.  It gives him a colder look than she’s used to, and she feels something like fear move inside her.

“How long have you been there?” Darcy asks, scrambling to her feet.

“Long enough.”

“Long enough to get a good floor show?”  Darcy’s hands are balled into fists, her muscles rigid.  “What the fuck is wrong with you?  Who the hell _does_ things like this?”

She aims a kick square at his shin.

And her foot goes straight through him.  And she overbalances, and ends up on the floor.  Again.

She pulls herself back up with as much dignity as she can muster - which isn’t much - and stands with her back to him.  “Just get out of here.  Leave me _alone_.”

She waits for the count of ten.  Then twenty.  Turns around.

He’s gone.

Darcy draws in a deep, shuddering breath, releases it slowly.  She’s not going to cry, dammit, she is _not_ going to cry.

Cold shivers against her skin, and then hands are turning her around, a too-familiar body pressing her down onto the bed.  Loki manages, of course, not to slide off the damn bed.  He moves quickly, before she has a chance to think, his body pinning hers, feet hooked around her shins to hold her legs down, his hands holding her wrists against the mattress.

It registers then that he’s _here_.  Physically here, not just projecting.

“I didn’t think you were allowed to teleport,” Darcy says.  “I thought that was an ability they had locked away from you.”

Loki transfers her wrists to one hand, pulling them above her head.  Brushes a lock of hair back from her face with his free hand.

“Darcy, what are you doing?” he asks.

“With my life?  Oh, just curing world hunger and attaining world peace.  Isn’t it obvious?” Darcy fairly spits the words in his face.  Turns her face away from his.

He trails his fingers down her cheek, then moves them beneath her jaw, forcing her to look at him.  “You’re running away.”

“You _just_ figured that part out?  And, by the way, running away usually involves the thing you’re running from staying behind.”

He actually looks startled by that.  “You’re running from _me_?” he asks, his voice barely more than a whisper.  “Why?”

Darcy tugs at his hand holding her wrist.  “Um, object lesson right here.”

His eyes flick up to her hands, then he releases his grip on them.  Unhooks his feet from her legs.  Darcy shifts, trying to ease the cramps that are already setting into her muscles.  And because she is _stupid_ , she manages to shift so that Loki’s hips slide between her thighs.

And her body - _damn her body_ \- is already responding to him, even as she’s pissed as hell at him.

“This is fucked up,” she says.  “This is truly and utterly fucked up.”

Loki presses his hips against her, and she feels his hardness.

And that’s all it takes.  She’s tearing at his clothes, feeling something give with a satisfying rip as she pulls his shirt away.  He’s kissing her like he wants to devour her, pulling her clothes away as rapidly as she’s stripping him.  There’s nothing gentle about any of this, teeth and nails tearing at skin, Loki making this tiny growling noise deep in his throat as she wraps a hand around him, squeezes.

In one fluid movement, Loki flips her over, pulls her up onto her knees.  He drops a kiss onto her shoulder on the skin where she’s still bruised faintly from his bite during the basement incident, then wraps her hands around the headboard of the bed.  Kisses her other shoulder, licks down her spine to the sensitive place between her shoulderblades which makes her writhe beneath him.  He smiles against her skin, does it again.  This time, his hand curves down around her hip, squeezes hard enough that she just knows she’s going to have bruises along her hipbone.  Slides his fingers down, grazing over her clit once, then plunging deep inside of her.  And damn her, she’s so wet that he can slide three fingers in without resistance, and she can feel his pleasure in that as he exhales, shuddering, against her neck.

He removes his fingers, and she looks back at him.  He’s kneeling behind her, his cock hard and curving up against his stomach.  He grins that damnable grin of his, and licks his fingers clean, humming in pleasure.

Darcy turns away, her heartbeat rushing in her ears.  Closes her eyes.

Loki kisses up along her spine, slides one hand up along her arm, laces his fingers with hers against the headboard.  She feels him line himself up with her, and then he enters her.  Just barely, and she wants to grind her teeth in frustration.  She tries to thrust back against him, but he holds her hip firmly with his hand, keeping her still.

“Loki, _fuck_.”

He kisses the shell of her ear, his tongue flicking against the sensitive skin.  “Shhhhh…”

And then he begins to move.  He holds her still as he thrusts shallowly, just barely moving at all at first.  Slowly, frustratingly slowly, he begins to go deeper and deeper.  Darcy is making animalistic sounds, all thought of words gone.  There’s nothing else in the world right now apart from the two of them, nothing apart from this.

Loki kisses her neck, and suddenly sinks deep, managing to find just the right angle that he sends her into an instant orgasm.  And she’s _screaming_ from the intensity of it, her fingers clutching at the headboard so hard that she fears it’s going to break.

He pauses, buried deep inside her, still hard, and kisses the back of her neck with a gentleness that’s almost painful for Darcy to feel.  Because gentle is not what she associates with Loki.  Gentleness means caring, it means-

She breaks off that train of thought, thrusting back hard at Loki.  He’s released his grasp on her hip now, though his other hand still clutches at hers.  He lets her move now, and Darcy closes her eyes tight, lets her hair hang around her face.  If she can’t see him, then she can pretend that it’s someone else.  Anyone else.

Except that she can’t, even with her eyes closed.  She can smell the smoky musk of him, can feel the slight chill on his skin.  Can hear that damn seductive voice of his as he murmurs into her ear.

As she comes a second time, she’s crying, tears falling from her lashes to splash against the hideous bedspread.

Loki thrusts hard against her, holds still deep inside as his hips shudder, his breath hot against her neck.

Darcy is still crying when he withdraws from her, turns her around to face her.  When he sees her face, he freezes, his face paling.  “D-Darcy?”

Darcy curls her legs up to her chest, covers her face with her hands.  “Just get out.  Get out.”

When she uncovers her eyes, he is gone.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
